


temptation, a serpent, and eve

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Prejudice, Daemon Touching, F/M, Past Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-26 12:35:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: "You only love me for my daemon."Steve means it as a joke and doesn't hear the way Nancy's laughter sticks in her throat.





	temptation, a serpent, and eve

“You only love me for my daemon.”

Steve means it as a joke, and can’t hear the way Nancy’s laughter sticks in her throat. After nearly a year together, it becomes almost impossible for her to produce the sound anymore.

It should mean something, it should mean _everything_ that Nancy adores Steve’s sweet Australian Shepherd so much but there are quiet moment where she wonders if she loves Artemis because she’s Steve’s or if she loves Artemis because she was the daemon brave enough to leap on a charging Demogorgon and sink her teeth into its neck. She couldn’t kill it, but she sure tried like hell.

Celestis is nearly always perched directly at her shoulder, or with talons curled lightly around her wrist, and yet even after a year, Nancy can count the number of times Steve has touched him on one hand. “_You’re a little intimidating, bud_.”

She _knows_ that he is – god, Nancy’s even a little proud of it – and she also understands that non-mammalian daemons are sometimes not the most comfortable creatures to hold. But should he really be that afraid of Celestis if they’re in love?

Slowly, Nancy realizes that she’s fooling herself into believing that they’re in love and Steve is letting her do it because he can’t see how ill-suited they are to each other. And it’s hard, it’s _hard_ to tell herself that she needs to cut this tie, because Steve is caring and sweet and she really does love Artemis a lot. But is it really fair to him when Nancy knows she only loves the best part of Steve?

Every now and then, she’ll see Jonathan, sitting by himself in the library or walking with Will pushing a cart through the grocery store. Nancy will see his mouth moving to form the shape of words and then the bright emerald flash of scales over his neck or across his wrist.

_Never trust a snake or its human_, some people say.

She’s never really thought about that phrase until really speaking to Jonathan. Nancy knew that you should never treat someone differently based on their daemon but she’d never seriously thought about the way people with ‘unusual’ or even ‘undesirable’ daemons were actually treated by other people around them.

“What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Celestis murmurs, talons firmly wrapped around her slender wrist, eyes fixed upon the brilliant rich green of Ithunna’s scales. “Is Jonathan bullied for having a snake daemon or did Ithunna settle into a snake because Jonathan is bullied?”

“Stop staring,” Nancy hisses, a blush blooming into roses over her cheeks. “She’ll think we’re mad at them!”

“Don’t you think she’s beautiful?” he asks, always able to coax out the thoughts Nancy herself shies away from.

“Yes, of course she is, now _hush_,” she hisses, nervously looking over her shoulder.

Celestis hushes, but it isn’t the last time he murmurs his admiration for Ithunna in her ear. Not very many people she knows have bird daemons – really the only one she sees often is Lucas Sinclair and his daemon Eupraxia – so luckily, no one can interpret his unsettled flapping and fluttering the way she can.

Until Murray Bauman.

Murray’s daemon is a Scop’s owl, with big tufted ears. Nancy and Jonathan never do get her name.

“Oh we like Steve. But we don’t _love_ Steve. Chrissake, you’re practically giving him a courting dance over there, Wheeler.”

She paces the room restlessly, reaching out to pet down his fluffed up plumage. “She’s a snake, Celestis,” Nancy says, with real regret. “You’re a bird. You can’t _hold_ her. She can’t hold you.”

“If we wanted to be held, we’d have arms,” he replies, practical as ever. “Steve is scared of me, Nancy, you know he is. And you love Artemis, but she barely seems to realize I exist.”

Miserably, Nancy says “Your claws hurt her, Cel. There’s no place for you to perch that won’t hurt her.”

“I want Jonathan to touch me, Nancy,” he admits softly. “Don’t you want to touch Ithunna?”

Nancy thinks of Ithunna’s large yellow-green eyes, so curiously looking out from Jonathan’s shirt collar. Her soft voice, barely heard while trekking through the dark woods, but soothing and gently rasping, like fine velvet. “Yes,” she whispers, eyes watering as she buries her face into pillow clutched to her chest. “I do.”

“It’s settled then,” Celestis says firmly, bolting for the door.

“Cel!” she gasps, tugged along by their connection to follow him as the owl crashes through Murray’s house with an uncharacteristic clumsiness. “Celestis, wait!”

Of course, they nearly collide with Jonathan and Ithunna right outside her door. “Woah, hey!”

Nancy gasps again as Celestis nearly falls to the floor before Jonathan catches him just beneath the wings, his sharp sucking breath filling the dim space. What can he feel from the brush of feathers on his bare skin? Nancy doesn’t even know what she’s feeling right now. “Oh god, Nancy, I’m so s-” His voice dies in his throat, Celestis settling down comfortably at his left shoulder. “Cel…”

“Jonathan,” her daemon whispers, timid in a way Celestis almost never is.

“Cel, don’t force him,” Nancy says, covering her eyes, embarrassed at her own soul’s reckless audacity.

Her whole body goes limp when he reaches up with his right hand, stroking down the ticked white feathers on Cel’s breast. Nancy felt it across her own breast, warm and patient, and all her bones turned to rubber. She passed the thought through him before she even realized it, echoing through her connection to Cel. “_Jonathan_.”

Jonathan says “Oh”, all soft and surprised. “Nancy…”

Cel flutters off his shoulder as Jonathan surges forward to kiss her and Nancy is shocked, delighted really, by his ferocity. Steve is a fantastic kisser but she always feels like he’s trying to talk her into something when they have sex. Like she isn’t supposed to want it, too. Like her passion should be a timid thing.

Nancy doesn’t want to be timid. She doesn’t want to…to tame herself because the world tells her to.

Jonathan doesn’t seem to want her tame, either. She pushes against him and he pushes back with a low growl, walking her back to the bed. Nancy responds by tearing his shirt off him and she pauses, blinking in surprise to find that Ithunna was hiding beneath his shirt, wrapped like a belt around Jonathan’s waist. 

“S-sorry,” he stutters, shying back, gaze averted. “She’s-I can-”

He thinks-he thinks she finds Ithunna…maybe unpleasant at best and downright repulsive at worst. Nancy’s heart is breaking. He thinks he has to hide her away, tear off a piece of himself to make her more _comfortable_. “Can I- can I hold her?”

His dark eyes blink at her with slow surprise. “Uh…um…okay.”

Tentatively, Ithunna unwound her head from Jonathan’s ribs. Unfortunately, the bare skin contact told Nancy immediately that she’d done something wrong because a shock of pain and fear went through them beneath the sick uncertainty. Jonathan winced and she pulled back her hand. “Oh, I’m-I’m sorry! Did I hurt her?”

“No, no, it’s-it’s not your fault.” He swallowed nervously. “That’s- I’m just too used to Will or Mom and Sindri holding her. I should’ve showed you how, first.”

Monkey daemons were also somewhat of a taboo, though that didn’t start happening until later in the Victorian era. They were considered ‘eerie’, being just a little too close to humans. Actually, now that Nancy was thinking of it, with Will’s daemon Nanna settling into a death’s head hawkmoth after his time away in the Upside Down, every member of the Byers family had daemons some people would consider ‘unnatural’. 

“Alright. Show me how.”

Jonathan bites his lower lip, but finally lifts Ithunna and says “Hold both of your hands up – like I am right now. Yeah, that’s good. Most people don’t really think of it, but snakes have delicate spines and if you don’t hold her correctly, you could break her back.”

Of course, he decides to tell her this while Ithunna is already winding herself around Nancy’s arm. He must feel her spike of worry, because Jonathan chuckles. Shivers go up her spine as Ithunna slides herself across her skin. “Hello, Nancy,” she says in her velvet voice that leaves her warm all over. Ithunna blinks over at Jonathan. “See, I told you not to worry. She thinks I’m pretty.”

“No,” she murmurs, letting her fingers whisper across the satiny green and black scales. From the corner of her eye, Jonathan shudders expressively. “Ithunna, you’re _beautiful_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons named here:  
Artemis - Steve's daemon, an Australian Shepherd. Means 'safe and sound'.  
Celestis - Nancy's daemon, a snowy owl. Means 'divine, heavenly'. In Roman mythology, this is a title given to both Jupiter (Jupiter Caelestis), and Diana (Diana Caelestis).  
Eupraxia - Lucas's daemon, a rook. Means 'good conduct'.  
Ithunna - Jonathan's daemon, a boomslang snake. Means 'again to love'. In Norse mythology, Idunn is the goddess who guards the apples of eternal youth.  
Nanna - Will's daemon, a death's head hawkmoth. Means 'brave, daring'.  
Sindri - Joyce's daemon, a diademed sifaka. Means 'sparkling'.


End file.
